FW: Brazilian Time Zones and DST

[Paul Eggert]

   From: "Stefan Johansson" <jason at stefan-johansson.com>
   Date: Wed, 3 Nov 1999 22:18:46 -0200

   1) As can be seen from the screen shot attached, taken only 6 minutes ago,
   Brazil has NOT been updated according to Decree 3188,

Oops.  Thanks for pointing this out.  I thought that I forwarded a fix
for that to the tz list, but now I see that I forgot to.  Sorry about
that.  I will send a patch to the tz mailing list as soon as I can.
There are several other changes that I'd been meaning to send (only
one having any priority -- the Micronesian island of Kosrae is off by
an hour in the current database) and I'll include them too.

   everyone in Brazil knows that the official time in Brazil is called
   "Horário de Brasília", i.e.  Brasília time. I think that justifies
   changing the zone name to Brasília.

I worry that this would lead to confusion.  America/Sao_Paulo covers
only Bahia, Goias, Distrito Federal, Minas Gerais, Espirito Santo, Rio
de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, Parana, Santa Catarina, and Rio Grande do Sul.
But "Horário de Brasília" also currently refers to Maranhao, Piaui,
Ceara, Rio Grande do Norte, Paraiba, Pernambuco (except Fernando de
Noronha), Tocantins, Alagoas, Sergipe, Mato Grosso, Mato Grosso do
Sul; and (ignoring the DST difference) also Amapa and east Para.  In
other words, the phrase "Horário de Brasília" is as ambiguous as the
phrase "US Eastern Time"; it's not clear whether DST should be
observed (as in New York and Sao Paulo) or not (as in Indianapolis and
Belem), and it's not clear which DST history should be observed.  I'd
rather avoid the ambiguity if possible.

   3) Palmas is the capital of Tocantins. It has 86,000
   inhabitants. Araguaina is bigger right now, with 106,000 habitants,
   however Palmas is the city that is growing and soon will be the
   biggest city in the state of TO.

OK, I suppose we'll have to change at some point then (but not now --
I don't want to offend the Araguaianans :-).